Grapevine: Where Norah Jones Grew Up in North Texas

Norah Jones was born in New York City in 1979, the daughter of sitar legend Ravi Shankar and concert producer Sue Jones. When her parents separated, her mother brought her to Texas and settled in Grapevine, a quiet suburb north of Dallas-Fort Worth. She spent the most formative years of her childhood here, far from the Manhattan world of her famous father and the music industry that would eventually come looking for her.

She began singing in church choirs at age five. The North Texas landscape gave her space and distance — conditions that would later shape her instinct for quiet, interior music. She attended Colleyville Middle School and then Grapevine High School, where she played alto saxophone in the marching band. Jazz was not yet the focus. She was a kid from North Texas finding her way.

From Grapevine to the World Stage

The turn toward jazz came when she transferred to the Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts in Dallas. But Grapevine was the foundation — the place where a girl whose father was a sitar legend grew up attending church, playing in the school band, and absorbing the understated rhythms of suburban Texas life.

After moving to New York in 1999, she told interviewers she grew homesick for Texas. She realized how deep country music had gotten into her bones during those years in the DFW suburbs. That pull toward honest, unadorned songwriting — rooted in country, soul, and jazz — came home with her when she recorded Come Away With Me in 2002.

The album won five Grammy Awards and sold 27 million copies worldwide. It came from a girl who grew up singing in churches in Grapevine, Texas, and never forgot what that sounded like.